Miguel Castro
The Bronx
Fate truly was smiling upon him. His mass of worshipers hadn't moved an inch from their holy post, and even better, not a single hero had descended from the skies. The birds circled high above, the sun's light basked him in a glowing warmth, but not a single TIAMA lackey descended down. They did not run through the streets, dash from behind the doors, or jump from the burning windows either. They did not flip over a car in declaration of their presence, or burst from the ground, or slip out from the crowd of onlookers, a cleverly concealed ambush that would have ensnared him in a vicious, thorny rosebush. There was only one plausible explanation: they weren't there at all. His ears and nose would've sensed any heavy-footed juvenile hero that had formed an attempt to take him by surprise, as well as any hero that had abandoned surprise altogether. If TIAMA's response had been uncharacteristically speedy and prompt, his worshipers would have been a useful asset. With careless, fragile civilian bodies grouped around him, the novice heroes sent to dispel him would have been forced to tread as lightly as he had on his tedious journey to this point, and Miguel was capable of making earthquakes strong and shaky enough to send any light-footed hiker tumbling to Earth. If they had injured, or even better, killed one of his smoothbrained pets, it would've even better. Oh, the newspaper headlines, the social media alerts! "8 Dead, 13 Injured After a Confrontation in The Bronx". "Eight Dead in Section Eight: TIAMA's Latest Hot-Topic Scandal". Sadly, he could not visualize the headlines within his mind, because he was blind of the eye, and because not a single man, woman, or child in this crowd would be injured. Miguel had correctly assumed that the response time to a case of property damage to an impoverished community (80% of which was African-American, Hispanic, and Latino) on the opposite side of the city from Staten Island would warrant a slow trudge of a response rather than a quick, athletic sprint.
Perfect for a slow, trudging beast like himself.
The best pastor kept his sermons brief, for religious followers were people of short attention spans, who's interest seeped away faster than wine down the gullets of the Last Supper's party guests. They were captivated, eyes wide with adoration, hanging on to every word like Jesus on crucifix, until the speech droned, and the details became filler, after which they craved respite like Moses in the desert. Respite, he would giveth.
"...I do not expect you to view me as a friend." Miguel said after a slight pause, a hint of softness decorating his voice. "I do not expect you to view me as a brother, or a father, or even an acquaintance. But I hope that you view me as someone who has the public's best interest in mind, someone who shows concern for the blatant tyranny, pride, and ability to utter two-faced lies that TIAMA possesses. Something must be done, and I will stand in the way of any so-called hero that attempts to silence my voice. And if those heroes decide that they will still hold their gags and handcuffs aloft, well..." he trailed off, gently letting his makeshift microphone drop to the ground as he slowly stepped off of the crushed car, shrieks and wails breaking loose as the twisted struts finally gained relief from his massive frame. The peace was short though, as Miguel immediately grabbed the car from its underbelly, his muscles straining and knees buckling as he lifted the smashed car high above his head in a perfect deadlift, eliciting several gasps and fearful screams from his worshipers.
"They will...burn." he hissed, before suddenly twisting around as far as his bulk would allow, letting his snout and cheek face the roaring flames behind him, and the smell of melting glass that reached his nose. One slight, unsteady pull back, and the car was thrown across the street, flying like a metallic, ugly pelican. The equally ugly, shrieking sound of the car bouncing once and skidding across the asphalt grated his ears for fast-flowing seconds, only to be gently kissed just seconds later by the sound of the car smashing through the wall of the apartment's ground lobby, a beautiful explosion of sound and imaginary color, of crushing stucco and snapping steel and intoxicating human shriek. He did not know whether the car had caught fire during its fatal skid, but it was certainly capable of such, and provided the perfect cover for the mystery arsonist, should he prove to be real. Leaking gasoline lit by the friction of a car being tossed into an apartment complex's wall? It was the perfect excuse for the roaring blaze, and, assuming his worshipers kept their sheep-like tendencies, enough to send the crowd scattering. They would run, but in the perfect direction. They would run south, down the street and away from the growing carnage. Miguel's target was to the west, a tall and broad brownstone that had previously been inhabited public storage locker, and one that was scheduled for demolition in three months, identified by the final wooden utility pole standing watch out front.
Licking his lips with excitement, he chased down the scent of the storage space, first following his nasal compass towards the wooden beacon before him. Of course, he did not intend to down this pole quite yet; doing so would be foolhardy. Instead, he focused his nose yet again, this time casting out for the scent of musty dust and rat droppings that permeated every abandoned building. When the smell struck him, it was enough to make him grimace and make his eyes tear over in pain, but also in joy, for he was moving at a faster pace than even he had anticipated.
With a grunt, he twisted himself around so that his scaly back faced the wide, padlocked entrance to the storage unit, while his hands and face remained close enough to lick the pole, claws boring slight holes in the eroded, chipped surface. All it took was a slight push of his lower body and a folding of his upper to bring his shoulder down and strike the pole, sending it creaking and tipping away from his body as he quite practically began to tackle the mast. Three more strikes with his shoulder, and the tower finally began to uproot, snapping wires overhead as it began to list and topple to the right. The force of his body bouncing off off of the tower gave him enough momentum to push back, curl his body tight within his shell and roll backwards towards the entrance, flicking his tail as he went to give him some extra lift. In one second, he had smashed right through the doors of the building with an ear-splitting crack, and in the next, the pole was collapsing down in front of the entrance, thumping down hard and barring off the jagged hole formed by MIguel's push inside. To chase him down, one would first have to jump over the fallen pole and tangle of loose wires that separated him from the street, or find another way in. Maybe if they were a midget, they could squeeze right through!
Still, he had no time to ponder over midgets, he had a hole to find. A trap-door, to be precise, a wooden one that would have stand out starkly among the drywall, plastic, tile, and metal of the storage locker's interior. He had come to this gray street through a drug-smuggling tunnel, and a drug-smuggling tunnel would be how he made his escape, escape like many others before him. You would be hard-pressed to find a street in the slums of the Bronx that didn't have a building connected to the network of tunnels. Since the 80's, 70's, and perhaps even farther back, they had been important underground railroads for criminal activity, taking the drugs that were shipped in from New York's port and ferrying them all around the city, keeping them hidden from the prying eyes of the police and the government. Eventually, they became too expensive to maintain, and were largely forgotten as the source of New York's drug trade moved from the ports to the burnt-out apartment meth labs that festered within the wounds of once-noble brownstones, but just in case one ever needed to make themselves scarce in a pressing time, a handful of the tunnels still remained safe, braced, and ready, upkept by the few big-shot criminals with enough money or superhuman power to do so. Miguel was one of the former. Two days prior, he had hired three desperate men, construction workers who had lost their jobs, to find a tunnel and mark its home building down for "demolition", telling them to block out the window, padlock the gates, and bring their tools. Thirty-six hours of work later, and the tunnel had been surveyed, braced up in a few key areas, and fully cleared out around the air shafts, which were nothing more than small, grated crevices that clandestinely lead up to the ground floors of buildings on the surface, letting in just enough oxygen to feed his bloated, hungry lungs.
They had been paid handsomely for their work. It wasn't a worry, he would recoup his funds in due time.
At last, the scent of the trapdoor met his nose and his hands as he bent down, feeling and smelling a damp, slightly rotting wooden platform lying underneath his palms. It was located in a deep, wide storage space on the ground floor, one easily accessible merely by casually lifting away the corrugated metal garage door concealing the space. It was an easy fruit to pick among a difficult harvest, almost too easy, too low-security, too out-in-the-open. Perhaps the idiom of "hiding in plain sight" rang true in this circumstance. Either way, it was right out in the open, and once he had grasped the door by its cold metal handles and yanked the two halves apart on their hinges, it was practically inviting him inside, what Miguel could only imagine to be a cold, dark, yet beckoning void, likely just large enough to fit his frame with only a spare inches of room for comfort. His back arched and the weight shifted to the balls of his flat feet, ready to leap inside, but some unknown force held him back, an invisible hand pulling him away from Tartarus' gaping maw.
Why had he agreed to do this? Why had he agreed to put his sovereignty, his freedom, and quite possibly his own life at risk, for strangers that offered him nothing in return but financial gain? All of his life, he had considered himself to be an independent thinker, one who marched to the beats of his own drum, sang to the melody of his own guitar, and who's heart throbbed to the rhythm of his own bassline. So why had he consented to this wild shot in the proverbial dark? Why had he agreed to submit to another's desires, agree to play the pawn on another man's chessboard instead of becoming the king of his own?
His hesitation was costing him, and his heart believed that it was foolish anyways. Who was to dictate that he was an employee, a subordinate? Perhaps if he was a member of a hired association, group, or an army, he would be a subordinate, but from what he knew, he was one of one, maybe two metahumans hired on this fateful day, by this fateful party. He was not an underling, he was a collaborator, a partner, an associate, one with a unique skill-set that a higher power had taken a close, careful eye to. For that, he should appreciate his own talents, and pay the favor back in kind. His hesitation was docking dimes off of that gift by the second. He owed a responsibility to deliver the profits to his investors and shareholders, to return their good grace so that they could co-exist within New York instead of starting a bloody, bitter war. There was no shame in diplomacy and peace, especially when it advanced Miguel's own agenda.
And so, with that cheerful thought, he leapt feet-first into the shaft, worrying not of the harsh impact waiting below.
